News from Nowhere; Or, An Epoch of Rest<br />Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance by William Morris (best reads txt) 📗

minority were to take up arms and show by force that they were the effective or real majority; which, however, in a society of men who are free and equal is little likely to happen; because in such a community the apparent majority is the real majority, and the others, as I have hinted before, know that too well to obstruct from mere pigheadedness; especially as they have had plenty of opportunity of putting forward their side of the question.”

“How is that managed?” said I.

“Well,” said he, “let us take one of our units of management, a commune, or a ward, or a parish (for we have all three names, indicating little real distinction between them now, though time was there was a good deal).  In such a district, as you would call it, some neighbours think that something ought to be done or undone: a new town-hall built; a clearance of inconvenient houses; or say a stone bridge substituted for some ugly old iron one,—there you have undoing and doing in one.  Well, at the next ordinary meeting of the neighbours, or Mote, as we call it, according to the ancient tongue of the times before bureaucracy, a neighbour proposes the change, and of course, if everybody agrees, there is an end of discussion, except about details.  Equally, if no one backs the proposer,—‘seconds him,’ it used to be called—the matter drops for the time being; a thing not likely to happen amongst reasonable men, however, as the proposer is sure to have talked it over with others before the Mote.  But supposing the affair proposed and seconded, if a few of the neighbours disagree to it, if they think that the beastly iron bridge will serve a little longer and they don’t want to be bothered with building a new one just then, they don’t count heads that time, but put off the formal discussion to the next Mote; and meantime arguments pro and con are flying about, and some get printed, so that everybody knows what is going on; and when the Mote comes together again there is a regular discussion and at last a vote by show of hands.  If the division is a close one, the question is again put off for further discussion; if the division is a wide one, the minority are asked if they will yield to the more general opinion, which they often, nay, most commonly do.  If they refuse, the question is debated a third time, when, if the minority has not perceptibly grown, they always give way; though I believe there is some half-forgotten rule by which they might still carry it on further; but I say, what always happens is that they are convinced, not perhaps that their view is the wrong one, but they cannot persuade or force the community to adopt it.”

“Very good,” said I; “but what happens if the divisions are still narrow?”

Said he: “As a matter of principle and according to the rule of such cases, the question must then lapse, and the majority, if so narrow, has to submit to sitting down under the status quo.  But I must tell you that in point of fact the minority very seldom enforces this rule, but generally yields in a friendly manner.”

“But do you know,” said I, “that there is something in all this very like democracy; and I thought that democracy was considered to be in a moribund condition many, many years ago.”

The old boy’s eyes twinkled.  “I grant you that our methods have that drawback.  But what is to be done?  We can’t get anyone amongst us to complain of his not always having his own way in the teeth of the community, when it is clear that everybody cannot have that indulgence.  What is to be done?”

“Well,” said I, “I don’t know.”

Said he: “The only alternatives to our method that I can conceive of are these.  First, that we should choose out, or breed, a class of superior persons capable of judging on all matters without consulting the neighbours; that, in short, we should get for ourselves what used to be called an aristocracy of intellect; or, secondly, that for the purpose of safe-guarding the freedom of the individual will, we should revert to a system of private property again, and have slaves and slave-holders once more.  What do you think of those two expedients?”

“Well,” said I, “there is a third possibility—to wit, that every man should be quite independent of every other, and that thus the tyranny of society should be abolished.”

He looked hard at me for a second or two, and then burst out laughing very heartily; and I confess that I joined him.  When he recovered himself he nodded at me, and said: “Yes, yes, I quite agree with you—and so we all do.”

“Yes,” I said, “and besides, it does not press hardly on the minority: for, take this matter of the bridge, no man is obliged to work on it if he doesn’t agree to its building.  At least, I suppose not.”

He smiled, and said: “Shrewdly put; and yet from the point of view of the native of another planet.  If the man of the minority does find his feelings hurt, doubtless he may relieve them by refusing to help in building the bridge.  But, dear neighbour, that is not a very effective salve for the wound caused by the ‘tyranny of a majority’ in our society; because all work that is done is either beneficial or hurtful to every member of society.  The man is benefited by the bridge-building if it turns out a good thing, and hurt by it if it turns out a bad one, whether he puts a hand to it or not; and meanwhile he is benefiting the bridge-builders by his work, whatever that may be.  In fact, I see no help for him except the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’ if the bridge-building turns out to be a mistake and hurts him; if it benefits him he must suffer in silence.  A terrible tyranny our Communism, is it not?  Folk used often to be warned against this very unhappiness in times past, when for every well-fed, contented person you saw a thousand miserable starvelings.  Whereas for us, we grow fat and well-liking on the tyranny; a tyranny, to say the truth, not to be made visible by any microscope I know.  Don’t be afraid, my friend; we are not going to seek for troubles by calling our peace and plenty and happiness by ill names whose very meaning we have forgotten!”

He sat musing for a little, and then started and said: “Are there any more questions, dear guest?  The morning is waning fast amidst my garrulity?”

CHAPTER XV: ON THE LACK OF INCENTIVE TO LABOUR IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY

“Yes,” said I.  “I was expecting Dick and Clara to make their appearance any moment: but is there time to ask just one or two questions before they come?”

“Try it, dear neighbour—try it,” said old Hammond.  “For the more you ask me the better I am pleased; and at any rate if they do come and find me in the middle of an answer, they must sit quiet and pretend to listen till I come to an end.  It won’t hurt them; they will find it quite amusing enough to sit side by side, conscious of their proximity to each other.”

I smiled, as I was bound to, and said: “Good; I will go on talking without noticing them when they come in.  Now, this is what I want to ask you about—to wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?”

“No reward of labour?” said Hammond, gravely.  “The reward of labour is life.  Is that not enough?”

“But no reward for especially good work,” quoth I.

“Plenty of reward,” said he—“the reward of creation.  The wages which God gets, as people might have said time agone.  If you are going to ask to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the begetting of children.”

“Well, but,” said I, “the man of the nineteenth century would say there is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a natural desire not to work.”

“Yes, yes,” said he, “I know the ancient platitude,—wholly untrue; indeed, to us quite meaningless.  Fourier, whom all men laughed at, understood the matter better.”

“Why is it meaningless to you?” said I.

He said: “Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we shall one day be short of work.  It is a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain.”

“Yes,” said I, “I have noticed that, and I was going to ask you about that also.  But in the meantime, what do you positively mean to assert about the pleasurableness of work amongst you?”

“This, that all work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or else because it has grown into a pleasurable habit, as in the case with what you may call mechanical work; and lastly (and most of our work is of this kind) because there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the work itself; it is done, that is, by artists.”

“I see,” said I.  “Can you now tell me how you have come to this happy condition?  For, to speak plainly, this change from the conditions of the older world seems to me far greater and more important than all the other changes you have told me about as to crime, politics, property, marriage.”

“You are right there,” said he.  “Indeed, you may say rather that it is this change which makes all the others possible.  What is the object of Revolution?  Surely to make people happy.  Revolution having brought its foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counter-revolution from setting in except by making people happy?  What! shall we expect peace and stability from unhappiness?  The gathering of grapes from thorns and figs from thistles is a reasonable expectation compared with that!  And happiness without happy daily work is impossible.”

“Most obviously true,” said I: for I thought the old boy was preaching a little.  “But answer my question, as to how you gained this happiness.”

“Briefly,” said he, “by the absence of artificial coercion, and the freedom for every man to do what he can do best, joined to the knowledge of what productions of labour we really wanted.  I must admit that this knowledge we reached slowly and painfully.”

“Go on,” said I, “give me more detail; explain more fully.  For this subject interests me intensely.”

“Yes, I will,” said he; “but in order to do so I must weary you by talking a little about the past.  Contrast is necessary for this explanation.  Do you mind?”

“No, no,” said I.

Said he, settling himself in his chair again for a long talk: “It is clear from all that we hear and read, that in the last age of civilisation men had got into a vicious circle in the matter of production of wares.  They had reached a wonderful facility of production, and in order to make the most of that facility they had gradually created (or allowed to grow, rather) a most elaborate system of buying and selling, which has been called the World-Market; and that World-Market, once set a-going, forced them to go on making more and more of these wares, whether they needed them or not.  So that while (of course) they could not free themselves from the toil of making real necessaries, they created in a never-ending series sham or artificial necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid World-Market, of equal importance to them with the real necessaries which supported life.  By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious mass of work merely for the sake of keeping their wretched system going.”

“Yes—and then?” said I.

“Why, then, since they had forced themselves to stagger along under this horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than one—to wit, the ceaseless endeavour to expend the least possible amount of labour on any article made, and yet at the same time to make as many articles as possible.  To this ‘cheapening of production’, as it was called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education—his life, in short—did not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of ‘cheap production’ of things, a great part of which were not worth producing at all.  Nay, we are told, and we must believe it,